


Rest Assured

by extortionist



Category: American Idiot - Green Day (Album), American Idiot - Green Day/Armstrong
Genre: Gen, my two favorite tropes: heather redemption and gay will
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-21
Updated: 2020-03-21
Packaged: 2021-03-01 02:14:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,519
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23247586
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/extortionist/pseuds/extortionist
Summary: The time of extending all of her sympathy to Will and catering to his neuroses and laziness in the hopes that he would change was over. Heather had more to consider than just herself, she had her daughter.
Relationships: Heather & Will (American Idiot), Heather/Will (American Idiot)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 12





	Rest Assured

Heather sat on her childhood bed. There were still clippings from  _ Tiger Beat  _ and  _ Teen People  _ magazines stuck to the wall with blue sticky tack; there was an old bulletin board of Polaroids and doodles from friends in the middle of the colorful cutouts of photographs and former celebrity crushes. The crib was crammed in next to her bed with the carseat on the floor in front of it. The floor. She hadn’t seen a clean floor in ages.

It was strange, being without Will in a quiet home where the back porch door was always slid open and her mother cooked macaroni on the gas stovetop in the kitchen. It felt peaceful in a way she wasn’t sure she’d felt before, despite her and her mother and the baby crowded under one roof. It hadn’t felt that way before the baby, when Heather was in high school and trying to fit in with Will’s rambunctious and wild friends. Will had been okay. They’d spend time together but it was usually in a group. He would focus more on his friends and video games than her but sometimes he’d put an arm around her while his eyes were glued to the television screen and Johnny and Tunny were yelling profanities at each other. Even when Will moved into his own apartment and she started to spend more time alone with him it never felt like he was there. He’d smoke weed and they’d sleep together and eat takeout in front of the television. She had thought she was satisfied with their relationship but there was always so much disinterest behind everything he did. 

As Heather’s pregnancy progressed she’d think about the way Will acted with her; she’d hold her belly and imagine what kind of life her baby girl would have to face. She came to realize that she didn’t want her daughter to be with anybody equally as distant and distracted. If it were up to her, her baby girl would grow up to be with someone attentive and concerned, someone who listened to her and matched her effort instead of acting as though their relationship was disposable. She needed her daughter to flourish in companionship, not stagnate as she realized she had done with Will. She had learned through her daughter that love did not look like what Will had given her. 

The disinterest had just been the beginning–their relationship had carried on that way before the pregnancy but during it Will practically became a stranger and Heather had found herself taking care of a child before she had even birthed her own. Heather realized looking back on their relationship before the pregnancy that it had not been good, but it took until Will’s behavior worsened for her to consider the repercussions of his apathy as a partner. Last February was when her world had turned upside down. She’d felt tired and been nauseous, but it hadn’t been concerning at first; she just thought she had worn herself out from working as much as she did after graduating high school. Once she missed her period, her mother insisted she take a pregnancy test. So she did. She took six and then another three the next day. She remembered the way the anxiety turned and burned her stomach as she stood outside Will’s bathroom with all nine of them in her hands. Johnny and Tunny left that day. Will and Heather and the baby they had just discovered sat on Will’s couch, Will motionless and speechless, Heather enthralled by her still-flat belly. And then Will got worse. 

It was slow at first. They sat on the couch together reading the stupid postcards Johnny nabbed from tourist traps in the city. Heather could hear the hurt in his laugh as he read Johnny’s spastic accounts of his life in the city and it only made her more grateful for him choosing to stay. As time went on Will became simultaneously obsessive and distant. He had a handful of friends who would hang around him occasionally but they were nothing like Johnny and Tunny were to him. Heather knew he missed them and sometimes he would cling to her like she was the last person on Earth; he’d get upset when she had to go to work and he’d spend the day moodily sprawled across the couch. The other half of the time Will would pull away from her physically and emotionally. She tried to reach out to him by rubbing his shoulders as he played guitar, cooking him dinner, and picking up after the beer cans and pizza boxes he left empty on the floor and the coffee table and in the refrigerator. She never thought she did anything to make him believe she didn’t love him but he continued the cycle of over-attachment and complete apathy as if that were true anyway. He could barely look at her.

Her baby girl was crying. Heather stood up from where she had been sitting on the edge of the bed and took her baby from her mother’s arms, holding her close to her chest and kissing her softly as she gently bounced her. Her baby was perfect. Heather hadn’t expected anything less from the moment she found out she existed. The struggle with Will made her fearful–she’d catch Will peeking over the side of the crib like a frightened cat ousted from its position in the family home by the new arrival. He would have a look of disgust on his face when she’d pull up her shirt in the mirror and trace the line down her pregnant stomach. He would curl up on his couch and refuse to face the baby wearing her soft little beanie and coat waiting to be taken for a walk in her stroller. Heather was afraid that would be how everybody saw her and her baby but it had just been Will in his inexplicable neurotic state. Heather hadn’t left him even when she was eight months pregnant and still vacuuming the takeout crumbs out of the carpet. She hadn’t left him when she’d spend too many nights in a row in bed alone while he slept on the couch. She left him when she knew Will didn’t feel the same way she did about their daughter. 

Heather had to move back in with her mother and live in her cramped childhood bedroom with the teenybopper decor she’d covered the walls with what seemed like eons before. She was able to pick up even more work than she had before with her mother there to take care of her baby when she was gone. She tried her best with both paying all of her daughters’s expenses and helping her mother as well; most days she was exhausted physically and emotionally but it never compared to the endless frustration, anxiety, and hopelessness she felt when she lived with Will. She hadn’t received anything from him since she moved in with her mother besides fifteen voicemails she hadn’t dared to listen to yet. When she left, he matched her anger and yelled in her face one minute and the next was holding her to him and shaking like he would fall apart if she stepped away. She didn’t doubt the voicemails encompassed both desperate sides of Will and she knew she was not prepared to listen to him plead while she was still accustoming herself to a mother’s life in her own mother’s house without him. The time of extending all of her sympathy to Will and catering to his neuroses and laziness in the hopes that he would change was over. Heather had more to consider than just herself, she had her daughter. 

It was worth it, she thought as she cooed to her baby girl. The months of loneliness and confusion and frustration she had felt with Will had all been worth it as they gave her her daughter. Heather didn’t know what the future held for her or for Will but she knew the one rock she had was her daughter. Holding, kissing, and raising her daughter would save her from the anxiety that festered in her when she thought of how hard everything was–she didn’t know when she would be able to afford to raise her daughter independently, she didn’t know if Will would ever take responsibility for being a father, and she didn’t know if she would ever be able to rid herself of the lingering exhaustion and anger she had developed in the past year of maltreatment from Will. But it was okay, she thought. Her daughter was something to believe in, a perfect baby who loved unconditionally and didn’t yet know about the worries of the state of the world or of finances or of complicated relationships. She simply crawled and cried and laughed and was drawn to her mother’s warmth; Heather could raise her in a different time than the time in which she and Will had grown up. She could raise her to avoid the mistakes of her parents. It was all worth it. 


End file.
